http://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2011/07/the-bahrain-stalemate/242086/

That Bahrain’s monarchy appears to be squandering the opportunity presented by its “national dialogue” between the government and the opposition should be the source of deep concern both regionally and in the United States. Bahrain’s strategic and political significance is totally disproportionate to its small geographical and demographic size, since it is the home of the U.S. Fifth Fleet, a flashpoint in the Gulf region between Arab Sunnis and Shiites, and the subject of long-standing Iranian ambitions.

Since protests erupted on the island after similar movements toppled the regimes in Tunisia and Egypt, the diverse but largely Shiite opposition movement has struggled against the minority Sunni-dominated government and royal family. Following a violent crackdown against protesters and a military intervention by Saudi and other Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) forces, the government has cast all opposition, of whatever variety, as part of an Iranian-inspired conspiracy to overthrow the monarchy.

The government’s response to protests — numerous killings, widespread arrests, mass firings, and the jailing of dozens of opposition leaders who have virtually nothing in common other than their demand for reform — has effectively divided the society into two irreconcilable halves. But, in this contest, neither side can possibly hope to “win” over the other. Bahrainis in both camps face a simple choice: make a deal or face a deeply uncertain and probably very unpleasant future.

The Shiite majority cannot be indefinitely marginalized and excluded from power — as it historically has been — without tensions continuing to intensify and potentially spiraling out of control with ever increasing levels of violence. On the other side, it’s clear most Bahraini Shiites understand that their chances of successfully overthrowing the monarchy are extremely slim. In any event, they know they don’t have a viable future outside of the GCC framework. The prospects of leaving the Arab fold altogether to join forces with Iran are politically implausible and, to all appearances, unappealing to the vast majority of Bahrainis.

The crackdown produced a lull in protests, but also a political stalemate. The government asserted its practical authority, but its legitimacy has been left in tatters, and its relations with the restive and suppressed sectarian majority at an all-time low. Thus far, the government appears to have no strategy beyond repression, which is, of course, a recipe for disaster.

The national dialogue, which King Hamad al-Khalifa first called for on May 31, was the first opportunity since the uprising began for the parties to begin to find a way out of this dangerous impasse. Several prominent opposition parties agreed to take part, including the largest Shiite group al-Wefaq and the nonsectarian social democrats in al-Waad. Their inclusion presented a serious opportunity to begin to craft a new consensus in the country.

Since proposing the so-called dialogue, however, the government has handed leaders of both of those opposition parties, along with other opposition figures, indefensibly stiff prison sentences in a mass trial that lumped together political figures of all stripes. Al-Waad leader and moderate Sunni reformist Ebrahim Sharif, who had scrupulously avoided calling for anything resembling the overthrow of the monarchy, was given five years. His sentence demonstrated both the totality and indiscriminate nature of the crackdown. The presence of Sharif, a moderate Sunni reformist, in the protests severely undermined the “Shiite/Iranian plot” narrative the government has relied upon, and he paid a heavy price for confusing people by not fitting any stereotype.

The national dialogue is rapidly falling apart, just as it enters its second round. Almost all opposition participants have complained the discussions are too broad, vague, and generalized to be politically meaningful. Results will be forwarded to the King for possible royal decrees. Or not.

Moreover, bitter acrimony has erupted, and four Wefaq members last week threatened to pull out on the grounds that the pro-government Salafist Member of Parliament Jassim Al Saeedi referred to the organization as “rawfidh” (“refusers” of traditional Sunni narratives about Islamic history, effectively the equivalent of “heretics”), a term regarded as highly derogatory by Shiites. During the course of the unrest, Shiite derogatory terms for Sunni Bahrainis, including the royal family, have also become well-known, generally some form of “visitors,” “strangers,” or “immigrants,” suggesting their presence is alien and temporary and their rule illegitimate.

All of this is disturbingly reminiscent of sectarian tensions at the height of the civil conflict in Iraq, when Sunni and Shiite Iraqis referred to each other as Umayyads and Safavids, respectively. Of course, Bahrain has not seen anything close to Iraq’s orgy of bloodletting, but the pattern is hard to ignore. Such terms not only draw clear sectarian distinctions, but they invoke bitter historical memories and age-old grievances, linking them to contemporary conflicts in an exceptionally dangerous way.

Over the weekend the situation deteriorated significantly, as Wefaq organized tens of thousands of protesters under the slogan “one person, one vote,” which will yet again be perceived as a direct challenge to royal authority and an implicit claim to power by a thus-far marginalized sectarian majority. At least one female protester was reported killed by tear gas asphyxiation in the oil-production hub of Sitra. Between the insults, the frustration, and the unrest, Wefaq’s board said it intends to pull out of the talks and ask its ruling Shura council for approval. The absence of the country’s largest opposition party would probably be the final blow to any chances the dialogue could have of creating a new dynamic in Bahrain.

It’s not clear whether or not Waad and other opposition parties will follow suit, as the opposition is divided on many issues. The royal family also has obvious competing factions, although the power of Saudi influence can hardly be overestimated. As an unnamed senior U.S. official was recently quoted by the Financial Times, Bahrain “is a divided country and a divided ruling family”.

Virtually every piece of good news coming out of Bahrain these days is offset by the bad. For example, the government recently released a 20-year-old poet, Ayat al-Qurmezi, who had been sentenced in June to a year in prison for reciting an anti-royal poem at the now-demolished Pearl Roundabout, then the epicenter of protests. However, Qurmezi now says she was beaten, electrocuted, and threatened with rape during her incarceration. Human rights organizations have issued scathing reports about both the crackdown and ongoing abuses, mainly directed against the Shiite majority. For its part, the government continues to cast the blame squarely on Iranian meddling, although the evidence of this is scant at best.

But, at some point, the government and the opposition are simply going to have to make a deal. Neither has any better, feasible way out. And, given the monarchy’s closing off of almost all oppositional political space in the country, the onus to actually and seriously begin this process, for the moment at least, lies squarely with the government.

Neither the Shiite majority nor the ruling family and its Sunni supporters are going to go away or give up. Indeed, given Bahrain’s small size and population, as well as its economic and security dependence on its neighbors, in the long run, they need each other to survive. The real existential struggle in Bahrain is not an ongoing sectarian conflict, but rather to find a win-win mechanism for workable, sustainable coexistence. Otherwise, a disastrous lose-lose scenario will become more and more likely. It’s difficult to say what, exactly, will happen in Bahrain if it continues down this path, but it’s likely to be far worse for everyone involved than any negotiated settlement possibly could be.

https://now.mmedia.me/lb/en/commentaryanalysis/will_south_sudan_be_a_wake-up_call_for_the_arabs

This weekend’s independence of the Republic of South Sudan should be an urgent wake-up call to the Arab world at large.

The loss of a large, formerly integral and oil-rich part of an important Arab state is obviously a huge blow to Sudan. Moreover, it may prove a significant blow to the Arab world as a whole, since South Sudan’s relationship with the Arabs in general is still in question. It has been offered Arab League membership, but whether it will accept that, or even the alternative of observer status, remains unclear. Meanwhile, it is cultivating strong ties to sub-Saharan African states, the West and Israel.

The reality is that if northern Sudanese and other Arabs are distressed at this development, as they reasonably might be, they have no one to blame but themselves. The almost unanimous yes vote in the secession referendum reflects the grim and bitter treatment of the southern provinces by Khartoum for many decades.

The north gave the southern Sudanese no reason whatsoever to wish to remain part of the united Sudan and every incentive to embrace independence at the soonest possible date. This history is by no means exclusive to Sudan, but reflects a broader problem throughout the Arab world of ignoring peripheral regions, oppressing ethnic and sectarian minorities, and utterly failing to produce societies inclusive of their heterogeneous populations.

Of course the same may prove true of South Sudan, which itself is made up of a myriad of ethnic, tribal and sectarian groups that are presently united mainly by their disdain for Khartoum. While it’s often seen in the West as “largely Christian,” and although its leadership tends to be drawn from that community, most of its peoples adhere to traditional religions and are strongly defined by tribal and ethnic identities.

But that is South Sudan’s problem. The Arabs ought to take this opportunity to learn yet another bitter lesson about the dangers of chauvinism and intolerance, although there is no evidence that they are presently doing so.

The Arab world has a long tradition of ignoring peripheries, both within states and within the Arab world as a whole. The Arabs as a collectivity did little to prevent secessionist impulses in South Sudan, ignoring ongoing problems in that country and mainly moving to rally around Sudanese President Omar Bashir when he was indicted by the International Criminal Court.

It’s fair to observe that the South was virtually driven out, or at least away, by decades of intolerable behavior from Khartoum, although Bashir deserves at least some credit for enduring the indignity of attending the independence ceremony, at the John Garang Mausoleum no less.

Many other Arab societies need to take careful note of the consequences of oppressive behavior.

Probably the only reason that the Kurds of Iraq, for example, have not really pushed for full independence is that theirs would be a landlocked state surrounded by hostile powers and most likely unable to export its petroleum overland. South Sudan, by contrast, is surrounded by states that are likely to help it overcome its lack of direct access to the sea.

The Arab world isn’t only plagued by dominant intolerant majorities, but also by oppressive rule by minorities in some cases. The Syrian regime, dominated by the Alawite sect, and the minority Sunni-dominated monarchy in Bahrain, are cases in point. Even endemic tensions between native Jordanians and their Palestinian fellow citizens demonstrate a more attenuated version of the same problem.

The bottom line is that throughout the Arab world, governments and societies tend to look at their peoples through sectarian and ethnic lenses that dangerously cast populations primarily in terms of their narrower, sub-state identities rather than as citizens and individuals with inviolable rights that must be respected for both moral and political reasons.

Many Arabs may view Bahrain is an anomaly or South Sudan as a remote and essentially marginal area, but the problems they illustrate about citizenship and identity are endemic and almost universal.

Like most of the postcolonial world, many Arab states are indeed jerry-rigged conglomerations that don’t reflect sectarian, ethnic and even cultural homogeneity. But that’s no excuse for a prevailing attitude that pushes marginalized and minority regions and communities to reject or resist existing state formations and structures on the well-founded grounds that they do not seem capable of accommodating the basic rights of individuals and sub-national groups.

Blaming the West, Israel, Iran or other outside forces is an illusion. For these internal divisions, like the northern Sudanese, the Arabs in general have no one to blame but themselves, since they are largely at fault for the centrifugal forces pulling societies across the region apart. That other Middle Eastern societies, including Turkey, Israel and Iran all have the same problem is no excuse either.

The Arab world must urgently learn the lesson of the secession of South Sudan: Move quickly toward inclusive national politics that respect the rights of marginalized minorities and regions, or face the bitter consequences of inevitable strife and, at its most extreme, national disintegration.

http://www.foreignpolicy.com/articles/2011/07/12/knesset_of_fools?page=full

In the latest of a series of extraordinarily self-defeating moves, Israel’s legislature, the Knesset, has just adopted the so-called “Boycott Bill,” penalizing any call within Israel to boycott Israel or its settlements in the occupied Palestinian territories. The new law allows for civil suits against boycott supporters, denies them state benefits, and prevents the Israeli government from doing business with them. For a society terrified of what it sees as an international campaign of “delegitimization,” its own parliament could not have produced a more stunning blow to Israel’s legitimacy by conflating Israel as such with the settlements and the occupation.

Of course this law could not have been otherwise, since virtually all effective BDS (boycott, divestment, sanctions) efforts in the West have been targeted against the occupation and the settlements, not against Israel. Some BDS activists would clearly like to extend this campaign to target Israel proper, but such efforts have met with extremely limited success in Western societies. On the other hand, efforts to express disapproval of Israel’s illegitimate settlement activities and therefore also illegitimate goods produced in the settlements have been meeting with a modest but increasing degree of effectiveness.

The “Boycott Bill,” therefore, was never really about Israel at all, but about protecting the settlements and the settlers from a growing international campaign to refuse to subsidize a project that is a dagger aimed at the heart of prospects for a viable peace agreement between Israel and the Palestinians, as well as a blatant violation of international law. City councils and governments in Europe are increasingly distancing themselves from commercial activities connected to the occupation. Norway, for example, divested from Elbit Systems, a company that manufactures sensor devices for the West Bank separation barrier, and subsequently from Africa Israel Investments, which is heavily involved in settlement construction.

The campaign against Israeli settlements is real, but this new law will almost certainly backfire. By crudely conflating Israel — which is almost universally regarded as a legitimate member state of the United Nations — with its occupation and settlements in the West Bank — which are almost universally regarded as illegitimate and indeed illegal, as well as a threat to peace — the Knesset has yet again provided an official Israeli argument for those who would extend the boycott campaign to include all Israeli institutions and not just aspects of the occupation.

The Israeli government has done this numerous times in the past. For example, when Israel applied for OECD membership, the national economic statistics it presented included the entire settlement economy, but no statistics reflecting the Palestinian villages surrounding the settlements throughout the West Bank. What this suggests is an official Israeli perspective in which there is a virtual Israel that exists wherever a settler happens to be at any given moment, and an undefined, unresolved occupation everywhere else. This legally and politically untenable and indeed preposterous position is similarly reflected in the new “Boycott Bill.”

Some of the boycott activities that Israel points to as “delegitimization” were forced by its own refusal to distinguish between itself and the settlements. In several instances, European vendors have made it clear that they are happy to sell Israeli products, but not those from the settlements, which they quite properly decline to support because they are illegitimate and dangerous. Israel has refused to provide any markings, identifying characteristics, or other indicators that would assure these vendors that the products in question were indeed from Israel and not from settlements in the occupied territories. As a consequence, several European vendors, particularly in Italy, simply stopped stocking Israeli imports, not because they objected to goods from Israel, but because they refuse to unwittingly sell settlement products and Israel will not distinguish them.

Perhaps the greatest irony is that the Knesset members who passed the “Boycott Bill” and their supporters do not seem to understand that boycotts, divestment, and sanctions that are carefully targeted against the occupation and the settlements but scrupulously avoid targeting Israel legitimize rather than delegitimize the Israeli state. They say, in effect: We do not want to buy or sell the products of the illegitimate settlement program, but we are happy to buy or sell Israeli goods because Israel is a legitimate state. By carefully targeting the occupation and the settlements, such boycotts implicitly recognize the legitimacy of Israel itself. But to supporters of the settlements, this is of little or no importance. To them, it’s all simply Israel.

The Palestinian Authority (PA) has been engaged in precisely this kind of boycott in the small areas under its control in the West Bank. Beginning in March 2010, it circulated brochures to every household in “Area A” complete with color images of the logos of the banned settlement companies so that no one could have any doubts about which products were unlawful. After an initial grace period, the PA began forcibly removing these products from Palestinian shops and then shortly afterward began prosecuting those distributing them. Palestinians have been effectively urging people the world over, including sympathetic Israelis, to join them in seeking clarity, and drawing a sharp distinction between Israel on the one hand and the settlement project on the other.

This Palestinian boycott of settlement goods is an integral part of the program of nonviolent resistance to occupation currently under way in the West Bank, and the international campaign is an extension of that. The “Boycott Bill” is an attack on precisely this kind of nonviolent protest, which is, of course, the appropriate alternative to the self-destructive and self-defeating violence of the past. But, as with other forms of nonviolent resistance, Israel is proving as intolerant to this nonviolent tactic as it has been to all other forms of combating the occupation. For Israel, it seems, the only accepted response is to submit and stop making a fuss of any kind.

It’s no surprise that large numbers of prominent Knesset members were unaccountably missing from the “Boycott Bill” vote, most notably Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. This is not only because the law is an obvious affront to freedom of speech and other principles of democracy, but also because of the high likelihood it will be struck down by the Israeli Supreme Court. Canny Israeli politicians no doubt also understand that rhetorically conflating Israel and the settlements in such a crude manner is a very dangerous thing to do in the immediate term, and potentially disastrous in the long run.

Given the powerful international consensus against the settlements — including the United States, which unequivocally holds that the settlement project is at least illegitimate, if not outright illegal, and which clearly distinguishes between Israel and the occupation — this crude law inflicts the most powerful delegitimizing blow against Israel in living memory.

When the Knesset itself says it does not recognize the difference between any effort to boycott Israel and those that target the settlements, it invites the rest of the world to see things in the same light. It encourages those who would not stop at expressing disapproval of the occupation but wish to target Israel and Israelis generally. Moreover, by making Israel indistinguishable from the illegitimate settlement project, it raises the banner of delegitimization higher than any group of non-Israeli activists could ever have hoped to.

https://now.mmedia.me/lb/en/commentaryanalysis/isolationist_america_not_quite

In some quarters of the Arab world there is a misplaced belief in growing American “isolationism” with regard to the Middle East, a false sense that the United States is pulling away from its role in the region. This erroneous conclusion is based on a powerful collection of data points, which are nonetheless being misconstrued.

The most important ideas cited by proponents of this interpretation require careful consideration.

First, the United States, while still the paramount actor in the Middle East, is finding it increasingly difficult to project the kind of military and even financial clout in the region that it used to. The fundamental reality is that it is still a uniquely potent power, but one that is nearly broke. It cannot write the kind of checks to others that used to come easily, and it’s even finding it painful to directly finance its own efforts.

One of the factors in the drawdown from Iraq was the cost of the war, which has been seen as prohibitive. This view is also informing the Obama administration’s preparation for a similar drawdown in Afghanistan. Voices from all parts of the political spectrum in the United States are calling for “nation-building at home, not abroad.”

The unquestioned loss of American financial sway means less power and influence globally, including in the Middle East. But this weakening should not be overstated since the United States remains the most influential power in the region by every measure, and is likely to remain so for the foreseeable future.

The attempted congressional defunding of the limited military engagement in Libya, however, was less budgetary than election-year politicking by cynical Republicans. Not only is it impossible to imagine Republican legislators defunding a military mission led by a Republican president, they would always have questioned the loyalty and motivations of any Democrat who tried to do so.

Neither Obama’s “leading from the rear” strategy in Libya nor Republican efforts to interfere with the policy for nakedly partisan reasons demonstrates any “new isolationism.” The limited engagement in Libya was a prudent if ugly approach, and Republican harassment of the president is inevitable during an election season.

Perhaps the strongest evidence that there is a neo-isolationist American policy towards the Arab world is the limited American response to the uprisings in Yemen, Bahrain and Syria.

American influence in Yemen is quite limited, the conflict extremely complex, and the variables almost innumerable. That Washington has to work closely with, and to some extent even rely on, Saudi Arabian diplomatic initiatives in Yemen might be a measure of its limited options, but not necessarily growing American isolation. When did the United States ever have more direct influence in Yemen? Even if it did in the past, it does not have a stake today in which faction or coalition emerges victorious, as long as there is a government in Sana’a that controls the country and tries to combat terrorism.

American options may be even more limited in Bahrain. Regarding the uprising as a Shia and Iranian-inspired conspiracy, and therefore an existential threat, the royal family and its Saudi allies are simply not listening to any outside voices, including American ones. Walking away from Bahrain is not really an option for the US, and there is no constituency in Washington for relocating, or threatening to relocate, the Fifth Fleet, which is based in Bahrain. Larger interests and great power can sometimes have the counterintuitive effect of limiting options with indispensable small clients who simply will not listen to reason on their own domestic matters.

Without question the most troublesome policy of all has been the Obama administration’s risk-averse approach to the Syrian uprising. The administration has been misguided in giving the impression that it believes that Bashar al-Assad’s regime either will, or possibly even should, survive the rebellion. In the long run, this is both unlikely and, for American interests, undesirable.

It’s true that there isn’t much the United States can do on its own beyond rhetoric to influence events in Syria, and that there is much to fear from chaos or civil war in that country. But a policy that continues to toss out lifelines and implicit reaffirmation to a regime that should and probably will eventually collapse under the weight of its own dysfunctionality and brutality—and which is historically and currently unfriendly to American policy goals—makes little sense.

But even the so-far misguided approach to Syria that seems to irrationally favor some form of regime continuity to the potential for internal chaos does not bespeak a “new isolationism” in American foreign policy. It is overly cautious to be sure, and excessively risk-averse. But it is not a return to fortress America by any means.

Ending what was always a misguided war in Iraq and what has turned into a fool’s errand in Afghanistan hardly represents isolationism. It is sensible, popular, and a case of moving beyond past mistakes. Bundling these correctives in with both justified and unjustified levels of caution regarding Arab uprisings, and thereby imagining an American retreat in the Middle East, draws the wrong conclusions.

The Obama administration, on the whole, is continuing to pursue American interests in the region aggressively, though not imprudently. This approach isn’t perfect, but it’s a big improvement over reckless past attitudes that smacked of hubris, and it’s anything but isolationist.

https://now.mmedia.me/lb/en/commentaryanalysis/nonviolence_a_palestinian_path_to_liberation

At the end of last week in the West Bank village of Bilin, an important principle was decisively demonstrated: Palestinian nonviolence can achieve real results in resisting the Israeli occupation.

After almost a decade, Bilin protests against Israel’s gruesome West Bank separation barrier has finally produced a substantial rerouting of the wall, giving villagers access to a significant portion of their confiscated land. The greater part remains seized or inaccessible, and protesters vow that their struggle is far from over.

There are several important lessons to be learned from this significant achievement.

First, the protests have been successful precisely because they are, and only to the extent that they have been, nonviolent. Israel and its supporters have no answer to Palestinian nonviolent resistance to an abusive occupation, except the accusation that it is, in fact, violent. While sometimes the protests have degenerated into stone-throwing by youths, and have often been met by force by the Israeli occupation forces, in fact the demonstrations have been overwhelmingly nonviolent. This is what has given them their power.

To extend and replicate this effective nonviolent approach, serious discipline will have to be developed and maintained to ensure it continues even in the face of military repression. Nonviolence is one of the most powerful weapons of resistance against occupation.

Second, the protests are all the more powerful when their objections are firmly rooted in international, and even where possible Israeli, law. In 2004 the International Court of Justice issued an advisory opinion that the route of Israel’s separation barrier, which is not along its own border but cuts deeply into occupied territory, was unlawful and a human rights violation. In 2007, the Israeli Supreme Court ruled that the portion of the barrier in Bilin had to be rerouted.

Both of these important legal findings were consequences of the nonviolent confrontation with what is plainly unlawful human rights abuse against ordinary Palestinian villagers under occupation. Nonviolent protests prick the conscience of the world, and of Israelis. They also disarm the logic of the occupation and the settlements as forward defenses in an existential struggle by Israel, revealing them to be in their essence, instead, a system of discipline and control by a foreign army over millions of subjugated people.

Third, nonviolent protests are not an end in themselves, but have to be part of a broader Palestinian national strategy. The fact that some significant Palestinian national leaders, especially Prime Minister Salam Fayyad, have supported and participated in the protests demonstrates a convergence between grassroots, bottom-up organization addressing local issues and top-down leadership that deals with national ones.

Fayyad’s rousing speech at last Friday’s protest—in which he spoke of the slow but inevitable victory of nonviolence, how it is a crucial tool in ending the occupation, and that when Palestinians confront occupation with nonviolence “the whole world is with us”—demonstrates the potential for such a convergence. Combined with state-building, boycotts carefully targeted against the occupation but not Israel per se, and well-calculated diplomacy, Palestinian nonviolence should be an essential part of a successful national liberation strategy.

Contrast this powerful and genuine grassroots approach with the transparent and cynical effort by the Syrian government to encourage protests on June 5 at the armistice lines between Syria and the Israeli-occupied Golan Heights. This area is one of the most tightly controlled border regions in the world, and has been under virtual lockdown by the Syrian military for decades. With the Assad regime in deep trouble at home, suddenly protesters were welcome to come and go freely, and apparently encouraged to confront Israeli troops.

At least 20 Palestinians were killed by Israeli forces, an overreaction and excessive use of force that typifies Israel’s approach to what it regards as its frontiers, whether those approaching it are armed or not. The death toll was predictable, predicted and entirely avoidable. Indeed, all Lebanese factions agreed a repetition of the violence along the Lebanon-Israel border on May 15 was unacceptable, and that area, by contrast, remained entirely calm on June 5.

If the goal of the June 5 Golan Heights protests was to embarrass Israel or touch the conscience of Israelis and the whole world, it did not succeed for many reasons: above all the unavoidable perception that the Syrian government was hoping to distract attention from its own killing of nonviolent protesters in cities throughout Syria. In fact, unlike the West Bank protests, the Golan protests achieved nothing.

This was only underscored in the following days by the killing of 20 Palestinians at the Yarmouk refugee camp near Damascus by a radical Palestinian faction aligned with the Syrian regime.

When the dust settled in early June, dozens of Palestinians lay dead while Israel and Syria were stripped of the ability to point fingers at each other for shooting unarmed people. And between these two events, the Syrian regime lost the ability to play the “Palestinian card” in its struggle to hold onto power.

While cynical exploitation by desperate Arab dictatorships is the last thing the Palestinian cause needs, nonviolent protests such as those at Bilin have proven their efficacy. They offer not only the best way of resisting the occupation but also, as the part of a broader strategy, a real path to national liberation.

https://now.mmedia.me/lb/en/commentaryanalysis/spring_or_winter_in_egypts_future

One can begin to discern the outlines of a plausible power-sharing arrangement in Egypt emerging from the current transitional period, in which all major players secure their minimal objectives. It would essentially be a three-way division of authority between the existing military establishment, the new presidency and the new parliament.

The Supreme Council of the Armed Forces is dominating the transitional period, but also has strong roots in the old regime of President Hosni Mubarak. Therefore, the military establishment is used to having de facto control of the most important elements of national security policy. Issues such as control and management of the borders with Libya, Sudan and, above all, Hamas-ruled Gaza; security arrangements with Israel pursuant to the peace treaty; and close military ties to the United States are all traditionally perceived as within the purview of Egyptian military authority.

It is hard to imagine the Egyptian military, now more or less in control of the process of transition, relinquishing authority on these matters to civilian control, particularly during a time of uncertainty, amid an evolving new system. Therefore, in one form or another, it is likely that defense and national security policy will continue to be dominated by the armed forces after the upcoming elections, whichever constitutional system emerges in the medium term.

Foreign policy, especially diplomacy and Egypt’s relations with the Arab world and the West, are more likely to be the domain of the new president, who will almost certainly be the former secretary general of the Arab League, Amr Moussa. Moussa has long cultivated a populist appeal in Egyptian society and is the only established and experienced professional politician presently operating on the Egyptian scene.

The fact that the Muslim Brotherhood is refusing to run a candidate for president, and is expelling members who put themselves forward for that post, is partly due to the desire to avoid a humiliating loss to Moussa. His long experience in Arab politics and with international relations generally makes Moussa well suited to establishing the presidency as a primary vehicle for articulating Egypt’s foreign policy.

The Muslim Brotherhood is also deliberately avoiding the presidency because it does not wish to alarm much of Egyptian society by seizing too much power too quickly and too publicly. The organization is concentrating its efforts on securing maximum representation in parliament, especially by building alliances with other parties and organizations. The Muslim Brotherhood is setting itself up as a domestic power-broker. In fact, it doesn’t have a defense policy to oppose that of the military. Apart from its generalized affinity with other Brotherhood parties and Islamists in the region, it doesn’t have a specific foreign policy to oppose that of a veteran like Moussa or others in the existing Egyptian foreign policy establishment.

For that matter, the Muslim Brotherhood doesn’t have an economic or development strategy either. Islamism isn’t exactly a political ideology with a comprehensive vision of social relations and structures of governance. But what the Brotherhood does have is very strong views on the role of religion in society and, of course, a profoundly conservative and reactionary agenda.

An Egyptian parliament that is largely excluded from national security and foreign policy will be left to address domestic issues. These will include the social and cultural matters that are the main focus of the Muslim religious right such as the Brotherhood. It will also include crucial questions of fiscal, development, environmental, infrastructural and other policies which Brotherhood ideology, such as it is, does not address in any coherent manner.

Unfortunately, the Muslim Brotherhood and other Islamist parties are likely to perform well in the upcoming parliamentary elections and will probably have a powerful bloc. Indeed, the current prime minister, Issam Sharaf, has suggested possibly delaying the scheduled September elections to give other parties a greater opportunity to organize themselves and possibly offset the Brotherhood’s existing advantages. That for now the Brotherhood will have to be content with domestic issues will not come as a huge disappointment to an organization founded on the mission to “Islamize” Egyptian society.

To protect the rights of minorities, women and individuals from the excesses of a potential Islamist-dominated or -brokered Egyptian parliament with broad powers on domestic issues, the other two centers of power – the military and the presidency – will also have to play the role of watchdog, drawing red lines around a parliamentary majority that begins to exhibit extremist tendencies. It is therefore essential that the emerging Egyptian constitution and system allow for the full participation of such religious parties, but not their use of possible legislative powers to abuse or oppress vulnerable groups.

The broader Arab world could not have higher stakes in Egypt’s ability to develop a functional power-sharing system that includes the division of authority, the participation of all peaceful parties including reactionary religious ones, and the protection of the rights of individuals, minorities and women. Egypt’s influence on the political direction of much of the rest of the Arab world will be enormous, if not decisive. If the Egyptian experiment disintegrates into chaos, direct or indirect protracted military rule, or the emergence of a tyrannous Islamist parliamentary majority, the “Arab Spring” will have well and truly become a winter of discontent.

https://now.mmedia.me/lb/en/commentaryanalysis/some_arab-americans_need_more_of_the_american

The Arab-American community continues to suffer from the debilitating condition of operating primarily within an Arab rather than an American framework, and of approaching its political mission based on a set of imported imperatives, rivalries and grievances. Far too many prominent people and organizations are driven largely by a derivative agenda, looking for guidance and direction from groups, individuals and governments in the Middle East, thereby rendering themselves woefully ineffective and marginal in their own country.

In some cases this is because of a reliance on external financial support. However, worse, in many other cases it’s based on genuine political allegiance, a real commitment to the agenda of organizations and governments outside of, and often opposed to, the United States and its national interests.

The first is problematic, because to some extent whoever pays the piper generally calls the tune. More than anything, it reflects the unwillingness of the large, successful and disproportionately wealthy Arab-American community to support its own organizations, a failure that has left many groups at the mercy of external donors.

But the second is even worse. A genuine, deep-seated allegiance to non-and indeed anti-American Middle Eastern actors guarantees political marginalization, ineffectiveness and self-defeat for those Arab-Americans who persist in taking the lead from dynamics half a world away. Other Americans are perfectly justified in dismissing and ignoring Arab-American groups that not only seem, but indeed are, irrelevant to the American conversation.

My colleague, the president of the American Task Force on Palestine Dr. Ziad Asali, frequently points out that “there are Arabs in America and Americans of Arab origin.” Those who consciously or unconsciously see themselves, act and speak as Arabs who happen to be living in the United States can have no hope of influencing the American conversation because their derivative agendas are at best inconsequential to American interests and at worst at odds with them.

Those, on the other hand, who see themselves first and foremost as Americans and take pride in their Arab heritage – therefore are in a position to help their own country advance its interests and promote its values in the Middle East – have an extraordinary opportunity to make a major contribution to the United States and to the Arab world.

It is impossible to overestimate the importance of this distinction, and the tragedy that a very large number of prominent Arab-American individuals and organizations continue to function primarily as Arabs in the United States and not as Americans of Arab heritage. Among other crippling implications of these imported agendas is that they persist in re-inscribing among Arab-Americans national, sectarian and ethnic divisions in the Arab world, dividing the community and rendering it politically ineffective. Organizations remain small and dysfunctional when they insist on speaking for Arab factions or governments when they should be addressing the core concerns of the Arab-American community in both foreign and domestic policy.

The “Arab Spring” ought to be providing an unprecedented opportunity for Arab-American individuals and groups. They can play an important role in helping to shape an effective American response to the tumultuous changes in the Middle East, and to define a better future for Arabs by promoting the rule of law, pluralism and separation of powers that characterizes the American system at its best. But because many prominent individuals and organizations remain mired in imported loyalties and rivalries, they are abdicating this responsibility, forgoing an extraordinary opportunity.

Cynicism about the American political system and the responsibility to help promote an enlightened version of the US national interest in the Middle East is crippling organized Arab-American efforts. It is a grotesque irony that in the decade since the 9/11 terrorist attacks, every single major Arab or Muslim American national community organization is in one way or another smaller, weaker or less effective than they were on September 10, 2001.

Sadly, this cynicism is not restricted to an older generation of immigrants whose worldview was shaped by formative experiences in the Arab world. Among the young, particularly online and campus activists, an irrational and unjustified belief that the American political system is somehow closed to Arab-American participation, or that engagement with the system and policymakers is debased and debasing, is propagating itself with a vengeance.

The good news is that there are quite a few individuals and smaller, policy-specific organizations that have broken with these attitudes in recent years, and are making significant headway. A number of my former colleagues from prominent Arab-American organizations are doing outstanding work in government service on domestic issues involving civil rights. And there’s no doubt that my colleagues and I at American Task Force on Palestine have demonstrated that constructive, serious and purposeful engagement with the policy community on even that most difficult of issues, Palestine, can produce real, substantive input and results.

The controversy over the American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee’s decision to disinvite Syrian American pianist Malek Jandali to perform at its recent convention seems to illustrate a failure by some groups to appreciate the normative expectations of American political culture. Too many Arab-Americans and their organizations remain trapped in derivative, external and sectarian agendas that cripple what ought to be important national groups. This has rendered the community marginal and greatly complicating its all-important quest for empowerment in our own country.

https://now.mmedia.me/lb/en/commentaryanalysis/what_is_washingtons_end-game_in_yemen

News that Yemeni President Ali Abdullah Saleh has been forced to seek medical treatment in Saudi Arabia will be very welcome in Washington. However, the United States still lacks an effective policy for ensuring long-term stability in that volatile, fractured country.

Since the turmoil in Yemen began, the US has been primarily relying on efforts by the Saudis and their Gulf Cooperation Council partners to secure Saleh’s departure from office as the beginning of a transition toward greater stability. For many weeks, the president refused to finally commit to a GCC proposal in which he would step down in exchange for immunity from prosecution. Now that he’s in Saudi Arabia, there is no doubt that the post-Saleh era in Yemen has begun.

But it’s not clear at all that this means an end to the bitter power struggle among Yemen’s elites that has divided the government and military, leading to his serious injuries. Saleh’s vice president is now nominally in charge, but his sons and nephews are still in place in their key military and intelligence positions. It’s not yet in the least evident what kind of reconciliation or agreement can be secured between the remaining regime forces and opposition groups such as the powerful Al-Ahmar clan and dissident generals.

For this, the United States is likely to continue to rely primarily on efforts by Saudi Arabia and other Gulf states to heal the rifts and restore a modicum of unity among the country’s elites and military. Washington was angered and alarmed by Saleh’s increasing use of American weaponry and US-trained counterterrorism forces in his internal power struggle with rivals within the elite, and will certainly expect that to stop given his removal.

American interests in Yemen are driven, above all, by concerns about the activities of al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula, the Yemeni affiliate of the loose-knit terrorist network. This organization has proven uniquely interested in and able to launch attacks directed against the American homeland. That includes the failed “Christmas bombing” over Detroit two years ago and an effort to send explosive packages onto American-bound international aircraft.

There has been increasing alarm in Washington in recent weeks that al-Qaeda and other terrorist forces have been exploiting the chaos in Yemen to gain space to operate – possibly even re-creating the kind of area of wide-ranging impunity that other groups used to enjoy in parts of Afghanistan and Pakistan. Washington does not have any major stake in the outcome of power struggles within the Yemeni elite, but it has a strong interest in a stable and united Yemeni government committed to denying terrorists an operating base.

The US has also sought to avoid Yemen turning into a fully-blown failed state, a kind of Somalia on the southwestern tip of the Arabian Peninsula and on the coasts of the Red Sea and Indian Ocean. Like the Saudis, Americans fear that such a failed state could prompt instability in much of the region, especially in Saudi Arabia itself. Therefore, Yemen has been one of the few cases in the “Arab Spring” in which Saudi and US interests have aligned almost entirely. This confluence of interests, along with the very limited options and influence the United States has on its own, has informed Washington’s reliance on Riyadh in trying to come to grips with this serious challenge.

That Saleh has now been forced to flee his country provides the two powers with a fortuitous and unexpected opportunity to move quickly to restore stability in Sanaa and move Yemen away from its seemingly inexorable drift toward failed-state status. It is precisely the kind of fortunate incident – removing a leader who is a clear impediment to progress – that has eluded NATO forces in Libya.

How the regime will fare in his absence and what the prospects for reconciliation among Yemeni elites are remains to be seen. So does the reaction of the thousands of peaceful street protesters seeking change. But it is strongly in the interests of everyone with a stake in Yemen’s future to move quickly to take advantage of the opportunity to reverse the drift toward anarchy and institute both reconciliation and reform measures.

From the beginning of the Arab Spring, it has been clear that, with Syria, Yemen has presented the greatest potential for regional disruption. Along with efforts by groups like al-Qaeda to promote and exploit chaos in the country, Houthi rebels and other insurgents, and a simmering North-South division that could again erupt into civil conflict, the anxiety-inducing factors in Yemen are uniquely alarming.

One can therefore expect Washington to give enthusiastic support to Saudi and GCC efforts to stabilize the situation and reverse the drift toward chaos. The chances of success for this exceptionally important but extremely difficult project are difficult to gauge, but the stakes could not be higher for Washington and Riyadh alike.

https://now.mmedia.me/lb/en/commentaryanalysis/is_yemen_about_to_disintegrate

Last Sunday I was involved in a panel discussion on the Al-Hurra satellite station regarding Yemen, one in which I was invited to discuss the policies of the United States. The other panelists were all Yemenis, including opposition and government figures. The conversation illustrated a great deal about how far down the road to chaos and confusion that country has drifted.

The main topic was about news reports that al-Qaeda had overrun the coastal city Zinjibar. Both government and opposition figures denied this, insisting that these were jihadist forces of a different variety led by a veteran named Khaled Abdel Nabbi. Al-Qaeda is unlikely to align itself with someone whose very name – Abdel Nabbi (“slave of the prophet”) – they would consider a serious blasphemy.

The self-contradictory and self-defeating exchange of accusations between the Yemenis on the panel was very striking. Predictably, the opposition figures said Abdel Nabbi was closely aligned with President Ali Abdullah Saleh and acting on his behest. The pro-government spokesman claimed that, on the contrary, “everybody knows” that Abdel Nabbi is in the service of rebel general Ali Mohsen Al-Ahmar, and has been for years.

Both the opposition figures and I noted that this accusation was effectively a self-indictment of the regime, since Ali Mohsen only recently defected. “If he was working with jihadists, why wasn’t he arrested?” asked one of the opposition figures. What nobody noticed is that flipping the question on the government is also, in effect, a self-indictment by the opposition since accepting the proposition that Abdel Nabbi works for Ali Mohsen means that the government was complicit with these jihadists in the past and the opposition is now.

The panel, much like the power struggle between Yemeni elites in general, was reminiscent of two boxers flailing away but landing at least as many blows to themselves as to each other. It’s true that Saleh benefits in a way by “playing the al-Qaeda card” as the opposition puts it, since this underlines the threat of chaos as the alternative to his rule. On the other hand, the opposition also benefits since Saleh looks increasingly weak and out of control of his own country.

Today news reports suggest that the Yemeni Air Force bombed Zinjibar in an effort to retake the town, while security forces are said to have killed at least 20 protesters in another southern town, Taiz. So rather than any of this being an example of a calculated plot by one side or the other, it’s more likely that Yemen is simply slipping into total chaos and toward failed-state status.

Under any controlled circumstances, Saleh would easily have been able to prevent 200 fanatics from overrunning a regional capital. It’s possible he didn’t want to, as some opposition figures claim; but it’s also undeniable that military forces on all sides are concentrated in Sanaa, the scene of a power struggle within the elite that has effectively split the military.

Rebel commanders over the weekend issued “Military Communiqué Number One,” which in the contemporary Arab world usually means initiating a coup or mutiny. In addition to this power struggle, Yemen has faced the Houthi insurrection, the presence of al-Qaeda and other jihadist forces, popular protests that are also probably not under anyone’s complete control, a Somali refugee crisis, and the existence of an undereducated, under-employed and heavily-armed population. There are also simmering North-South tensions that could re-erupt into another major national conflict.

So it’s quicker and simpler to list the forces keeping Yemen together than the dizzying array driving it apart. There is no question that the primary problem is that Saleh is refusing to step down, when even many of his supporters realize that it’s past time for him to go. Reportedly he privately claims the issue is about the next generation: He doesn’t want his sons and nephews to step aside for their counterparts in the rival Al-Ahmar clan. But most observers must have concluded at this point that Saleh is simply incapable of voluntarily stepping aside.

Thus far in the “Arab Spring,” no autocrat has voluntarily resigned. In Tunisia and Egypt, the leaders were removed by the army. In Libya (and now perhaps Yemen) the army split and civil war ensued. In Syria, President Bashar al-Assad has thus far managed to hold on to military loyalty, and thus to power. The efforts of the Gulf Cooperation Council states to get Saleh to be the first to voluntarily and peacefully step aside have proven a humiliating failure.

But opposition forces, especially within the elite and the military, are also hardly paragons of virtue and responsibility. As the television panel I was on concluded, while Saleh is certainly the core of the problem, both sides in the Yemeni elite power struggle are perfectly capable of inflicting damage on themselves, and on their country.

At this stage, Yemen looks poised for an extended period of conflict and chaos. And with so many centrifugal forces at work, the country may possibly even be heading toward disintegration.